Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-06T22:56:05.529Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building permanence: fire outbreaks and emergent tenure security in urban Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Jeffrey W. Paller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fire outbreaks are common sources of anxiety and insecurity in informal settlements, but they can also provide new opportunities for claim making and governance of urban space. This article examines how a series of four fires in Accra, Ghana – three of which took place in its largest squatter settlement – offered new opportunities to experiment with governance, or a new way for residents and leaders to imagine and construct the future. Empirically, I document how, in the process of reconstruction, residents redrew property lines and reshaped social relations. They did this through the emergent political action I call building permanence, or a physical claim to the urban space one inhabits, as well as a new existential state of being and living in environs that will last and remain unharmed. The article offers a possible way towards achieving more secure tenure beyond formalization and infrastructure upgrades, and focuses attention on how institutions change in the context of daily life after a moment of crisis.

Résumé

Les incendies sont des sources courantes d'anxiété et d'insécurité dans les peuplements informels, mais ils peuvent aussi offrir de nouvelles opportunités de revendication et de gouvernance de l'espace urbain. Cet article examine comment une série de quatre incendies à Accra au Ghana (dont trois survenus dans son plus grand quartier d'habitat spontané) a donné l'occasion d'expérimenter la gouvernance, ou un nouveau moyen pour les résidents et les dirigeants d'imaginer et de construire l'avenir. De manière empirique, l'auteur relate comment, lors du processus de reconstruction, les résidents ont redéfini les limites de propriété et refaçonné les rapports sociaux. Ils l'ont fait par le biais de l'action politique émergente que l'auteur appelle « construction de permanence », ou une revendication physique à l'espace urbain habité, ainsi qu'un nouvel état existentiel d’être et de vivre dans un cadre qui va durer et rester intact. Cet article offre une voie possible vers une plus grande sécurité foncière, au-delà de la formalisation et des améliorations infrastructurelles, et se concentre sur la manière dont les institutions évoluent dans le contexte de la vie quotidienne après un moment de crise.

Type
Ethnographies of emergence
Information
Africa , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 437 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Afenah, A. (2012) ‘Engineering a millennium city in Accra, Ghana: the Old Fadama intractable issue’, Urban Forum 23 (4): 527–40.Google Scholar
Allen, A. E. (2012) ‘Solidarity with the people of Old Fadama, Accra-Ghana’, Bartlett Development Planning Unit, 24 May <http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dpublog/2012/05/24/solidarity-with-the-people-of-old-fadama-accra-ghana/>, accessed 19 April 2019.,+accessed+19+April+2019.>Google Scholar
Allison, A. (2012) ‘Ordinary refugees: social precarity and soul in 21st century Japan’, Anthropological Quarterly 85 (2): 345–70.Google Scholar
Bayat, A. (2013) Life as Politics: how ordinary people change the Middle East. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Berk, G. and Galvan, D. (2009) ‘How people experience and change institutions: a field guide to creative syncretism’, Theory and Society 38: 543–80.Google Scholar
Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Birkinshaw, M. (2008) ‘A big devil in the Jondolos: the politics of shack fires’. Abahlali baseMjondolo website, 8 September <http://abahlali.org/files/Big_Devil_Politics_of_Shack_Fire.pdf>, accessed 27 April 2019.,+accessed+27+April+2019.>Google Scholar
Bob-Milliar, G. M. (2012) ‘Political party activism in Ghana: factors influencing the decision of the politically active to join a political party’, Democratization 19 (4): 668–89.Google Scholar
Campbell, S. (2016) ‘Everyday recomposition: precarity and socialization in Thailand's migrant workforce’, American Ethnologist 43 (2): 258–69.Google Scholar
Chalfin, B. (2014) ‘Public things, excremental politics, and the infrastructure of bare life in Ghana's city of Tema’, American Ethnologist 41 (1): 92–109.Google Scholar
Chance, K. R. (2015) ‘“Where there is fire, there is politics”: ungovernability and material life in urban South Africa’, Cultural Anthropology 30 (3): 394–423.Google Scholar
Del Negro, G. P. and Berger, H. M. (2004) Identity and Everyday Life: essays in the study of folklore, music, and popular culture. Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Denning, M. (2010) ‘Wageless life’, New Left Review II/66: 79–97.Google Scholar
De Soto, H. (2000) The Mystery of Capital: why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else. New York NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Dewey, J. (2002 [1922]) Human Nature and Conduct. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Durand-Lasserve, A. and Royston, L. (2002) Holding their Ground: secure land tenure for the urban poor in developing countries. London and New York NY: Earthscan.Google Scholar
Elyachar, J. (2003) ‘Mappings of power: the state, NGOs, and international organizations in the informal economy of Cairo’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (3): 571–605.Google Scholar
Fischer, B. M. (2008) A Poverty of Rights: citizenship and inequality in twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fox, S. (2014) ‘The political economy of slums: theory and evidence from sub-Saharan Africa’, World Development 54: 191–203.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures: selected essays. New York NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gill, G. (2014) ‘Knowledge practices in Abahlali baseMjondolo’, Interface 6 (1): 211–29.Google Scholar
Gillespie, T. (2016) ‘Accumulation by urban dispossession: struggles over urban space in Accra, Ghana’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41: 66–77.Google Scholar
Grant, R. (2009) Globalizing City: the urban and economic transformation of Accra, Ghana. Syracuse NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Grant, R. and Oteng-Ababio, M. (2012) ‘Mapping the invisible and real “African” economy: urban e-waste circuitry’, Urban Geography 33 (1): 1–21.Google Scholar
Gulyani, S. and Bassett, E. M. (2007) ‘Retrieving the baby from the bathwater: slum upgrading in sub-Saharan Africa’, Environment and Planning 25 (4): 486–515.Google Scholar
Gulyani, S. and Talukdar, D. (2008) ‘Slum real estate: the low-quality high-price puzzle in Nairobi's slum rental market and its implications for theory and practice’, World Development 36 (10): 1916–37.Google Scholar
Harris, K. and Scully, B. (2015) ‘A hidden counter-movement? Precarity, politics, and social protection before and beyond the neoliberal era’, Theory and Society 44: 415–44.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. A. (1945) ‘The use of knowledge in society’, American Economic Review 35 (4): 519–30.Google Scholar
Holston, J. (2008) Insurgent Citizenship: disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Klopp, J. M. (2008) ‘Remembering the destruction of Muoroto: slum demolitions, land and democratisation in Kenya’, African Studies 67 (3): 295–314.Google Scholar
Kohn, M. (2016) The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Landau, L. B. (2014) ‘Conviviality, rights, and conflict in Africa's urban estuaries’, Politics and Society 42 (3): 359–80.Google Scholar
LeVan, C. A. and Olubowale, J. (2014) ‘“I am here until development comes”: displacement, demolitions, and property rights in urbanizing Nigeria’, African Affairs 113 (452): 387–408.Google Scholar
Li, T. M. (1996) ‘Images of community: discourse and strategy in property relations’, Development and Change 27 (3): 501–27.Google Scholar
Li, T. M. (2007) The Will to Improve: governmentality, development, and the practice of politics. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lock, M. and Farquhar, J. (eds) (2007) Beyond the Body Proper: reading the anthropology of material life. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, N. J. and Feldman, M. P. (2017) ‘Institutional life within an entrepreneurial region’, Geography Compass 11 (3): 1–10.Google Scholar
Lund, C. (2016) ‘Rule and rupture: state formation through the production of property and citizenship’, Development and Change 47 (6): 1199–228.Google Scholar
Macharia, K. (1992) ‘Slum clearance and the informal economy in Nairobi’, Journal of Modern African Studies 30 (2): 221–36.Google Scholar
Makhulu, A. (2015) Making Freedom: apartheid, squatter politics, and the struggle for home. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, B. (1966) Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. Boston MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Moore, B. (1978) Injustice: the social origins of obedience and revolt. New York NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Munck, R. (2013) ‘The precariat: a view from the South’, Third World Quarterly 34 (5): 747–62.Google Scholar
Narotzky, S. and Besnier, N. (2014) ‘Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy. An introduction to supplement 9’, Current Anthropology 55 (S9): S4–S16.Google Scholar
Obeng-Odoom, F. (2011) ‘The informal sector in Ghana under siege’, Journal of Developing Societies 27: 355–92.Google Scholar
Opare, J. A. (2003) ‘Kayayei: the women head porters of southern Ghana’, Journal of Social Development in Africa 18 (2): 33–49.Google Scholar
Owusu, M. (2013) ‘Community-managed reconstruction after the 2012 fire in Old Fadama, Ghana’, Environment and Urbanization 25 (1): 243–8.Google Scholar
Paller, J. W. (2014) ‘Informal institutions and personal rule in urban Ghana’, African Studies Review 57 (3): 123–42.Google Scholar
Paller, J. W. (2015) ‘Informal networks and access to power to obtain housing in urban slums in Ghana’, Africa Today 62 (1): 30–55.Google Scholar
Paller, J. W. (2019) Democracy in Ghana: everyday politics in urban Africa. New York NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rubin, J. (2014) ‘Making art from uncertainty: magic and its politics in South African rugby’, Cultural Anthropology 29 (4): 699–719.Google Scholar
Schatzberg, M. G. (2014) ‘Transformation and struggle’ in Koechlin, L. and Förster, T. (eds), The Politics of Governance: actors and articulations in Africa and beyond. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: hidden transcripts. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Selmeczi, A. (2009) ‘“… We are being left to burn because we do not count”: biopolitics, abandonment, and resistance’, Global Society 23 (4): 519–38.Google Scholar
Simone, A. (2004a) ‘People as infrastructure: intersecting fragments in Johannesburg’, Public Culture 16 (3): 407–29.Google Scholar
Simone, A. (2004b) For the City Yet to Come: changing African life in four cities. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Skuse, A. and Cousins, T. (2007) ‘Spaces of resistance: informal settlement, communication and community organisation in a Cape Town township’, Urban Studies 44 (5–6): 979–95.Google Scholar
Stacey, P. and Lund, C. (2016) ‘In a state of slum: governance in an informal urban settlement in Ghana’, Journal of Modern African Studies 54 (4): 591–615.Google Scholar
Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: the dangerous new class. London and New York NY: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Stewart, K. (2007) Ordinary Effects. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, K. (2012) ‘Precarity's forms’, Cultural Anthropology 27 (3): 518–25.Google Scholar
Tsing, A. L. (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Twigg, J., Christie, N., Haworth, J., Osuteye, E. and Skarlatidou, A. (2017) ‘Improved methods for fire risk assessment in low-income and informal settlements’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 14 (2): 139.Google Scholar